Good question. Even as this site is being shaped, we wonder at that very question. Why love? If it is part of the natural fluctuative stability of the universe that we should experience both the crests and troughs of life, and because love is at least one of those, then isn't it an exercise of your personal freedom, in that "you're free to choose from the tones on the wind chime" sort of quasi-choice we really all have...

What?

Oh, you paused briefly as you asked, didn't you? And emphasised a certain letter slightly? "Why, Love?" you plead. In that case, the answer goes back again to the nature of everything, of You as Everything, You as Me and our inextricable nature, for even as we drift we are bound to-

Unless -

Oh. The chairs.

Yeah. Well, at the end of 2006, I (Nick) was given a couple of strings of Christmas-style lights but only utilized one on the outside of my house. The other strand I draped lightly around the frame of the wooden platform under which I sleep, so as to finally, finally have enough light by which to read myself to drowsiness. They gave the room a mellifluous glow, a welcoming, almost embryonic (but not completely embryonic, that's gross) quality that I found most pleasing. Plans were made immediately to continue using them even beyond their season, fashion be damned. That first night I read for hours, marvelling first at the gentle gift of sight and then at myself for thinking things like, "The gentle gift of sight."

All, however, was not perfection made decorative. The bulbs were cursed, as I discovered, to inflict horrible visions on anyone who slept within the confines of their radiance. I dreamt, that night, that I was sent an email, and in that email was a hyperlink. After clicking that drea-mail portal, I spent the rest of the night - I woke five or six times, even got up and walked around for a few minutes but always returned to the dream when I fell again - looking through a website called "ilovesittingonchairs.com." It was horrible - just pictures of all kinds of people sitting on all kinds of chairs, almost uniformly looking casual, pleasant, but absolutely unbearable, mostly because I could do nothing but continue to look on and, with my dream fingers, scroll down.

First thing that early morning, when I decided I could take no more, I googled the phrase and the site. Thankfully, no such beast existed. With a malingering afterthought, I went on about my business, and over the course of the day told several friends, jokingly, about the awful website I'd dreamed about.

All of them, after I told them I'd checked to make sure it wasn't real, said, "Wow. Are you going to make it?" I declared myself firmly against the idea, refusing to unleash such a thing on the hapless Internet... but as I found myself that night telling the story for the fifth time, to my dad, and he said it sounded like something I had to do, whether I wanted to or not... I began to reconsider.

I loaded the Internet Chat Device for the first time in months, and one of two friends online was Erik, with whom I have collaborated on web projects before. I told him about the dream and, since he was just sitting down in a coffee shop to do some recreational coding, he agreed to help me build it. The pieces were in place. Fate, surely, was with us. We embarked. The site currently before you is a rough beginning, a forerunner to the grand scheme we have envisioned. We begin with a Chair-A-Day posting, but there is much more to come. Historical features, time-lapse movies, and, ultimately, a chance to pull your own chair up to our table are all on the way.

Why? Even after all of that, we aren't sure. But it is proving to be an interesting way to look at the world. At its best, we hope the page will be worth a laugh. At its other, hypothetical best, this might be one way to expand your awareness of your surroundings and your place in and on them. Either way, let's have a good time. Remember this, though:

Couches need not apply.